This beer has a huge following from all of those crazy barleywine kids that always get jazzed about anything that gets tossed in a top notch bourbon barrel. PSH. Actually the venn diagram of my life is subsumed by a good penumbra of that diagram, for those visually inclined. I LIKE THIS STYLE. I hope I like this too, seems pretty legit.

Don't adjust your monitor, this beer is flatter than the plot arch in an M. Night Shamylan movie. The twist is you wake up with no credit card.

Kuhnhenn Bourbon Barrel Barley Wine, Barleywine 15.1% abv, 2010 vintage

A: It looks like iced tea. That’s it. Like it seriously looks like the free drink you get at the Old Spaghetti Factory. The lacing is nominal like a hug from a stripper after cash has changed hands. It sits there tepid and sad, wondering where its mother barleywine is, longing for the warm comfort of the barrel it loved. No lacing, not jack shit.

When you fuck with the barley, you get the wine.

S: Oh well, shit. All the hating I just did comes full circle immediately after smelling this. It is brown sugar, sweet macaroon, toffee, mild clove, maple syrup and fresh waffle. It smells incredible. It is like a decadent alcoholic dessert to take in. The lackluster appearance is a complete wash at this point. Just amazing.

T: It doesn’t go as sweet as the nose would suggest and hits initially with a warming flat metallic note that quickly changes its tune into a candy bitterness like a caramel coated leaf and then warms gently into a bourbon den of iniquity. After the first few sips, it becomes apparent that this is meant to be shared, even in a 12oz format. At the end there’s a huge oakiness like that woody finish that I hate from Hair of the Dog and encountered with the 4th Dimentia. It is definitely an intentional stylistic decision and I just dont think that I am on board.

This beer reminds me of something old, angry, irascible, and hateful.

M: This has a mild slick watery coating that marches through and burns shit like General Sherman. Railroad rails are tied around trees. Nothing is spared and your antebellum palate is destroyed toe to tip. It reminds me of in Civilization where you could develop a single unit to completely leevel the entire Babylonian civilization, this is that little beer that is a nuke underneath.

D: Well, read that last paragraph and ask yourself if you would be down to put up with that. I am letting it warm and the bitter beginning with the fireball finish makes this a clip cloppy recalcitrant colt that will not be tamed. I tug at the malty horsebit but it will not be broken, this alcholic beast is a dominator.

After just 12oz of this you wont know what exactly happened, but you might like it that way.

Narrative: Jayden ground his teeth and surveyed the recess playground. “Pussies, each and every one of them, part and parcel” he noted to Jeffrey who was busy counting the Lunchables spoils. Jayden was an anomaly lab child created by a hopeful lesbian love union, the results were not as desired. Jayden grew uninhibited without the constraints of a plcental wall and was a statuesque 5′ tall at age 9 and had the cerebral capacity of a zygote fed pure synthetic nutrition. They had developed the super bully. Having two mothers fed his insecurities and his rage. It wasn’t so much the teasing from the other children, for they regarded him as a stoic golem, not to be pestered. He was upset with the draconian North Dakota laws, which forbade domestic partnerships. Bullying was his craft and vent. “OH OH OH, hey, Golding, come here one more time, your Yu Gi Oh deck, is fucking mine.” It was a troublesome existence, but he financed a civil rights group with his hateful conduct. It was the irony of a filthy hand washing a calloused hand. He flipped a salami piece into his gullet and ground it with his new permanent teeth. “Hunter is a complete fag” he quipped without the mildest sense of irony.